Anonymous wrote:Just curious. Haven't heard of any recruits from sophomore DD's very sports and academically focused high school. Are they looking for smart athletes? How competitive are their field hockey, track, and tennis teams (for my DD specifically)
Ivy league is Division 1. With the exception of football where they know they will never compete on a national scale (and won't agree to playoffs), they care quite a bit about how strong an athlete is your kid. For basketball and football, and to some extent baseball and increasingly lacrosse...their academic criteria has more leeway (i.e., they will take kids with 1200 SAT scores, but you do need to be straight A with a decent transcript). Not sure about the other sports.
Again...the transfer portal is changing many college sports, even at the Ivy level. Any "commitments" that happen prior to Fall of senior year are nothing more than words. A coach will drop you in a heartbeat if they find a more talented, smart player...or they had a better year in the transfer portal than what they expected.
Ivy schools are attractive transfer portal schools for smart kids that were good enough to say play basketball at Duke, but realize while they were recruited...they may ride the bench all 4 years. All of a sudden, Princeton looks really good especially if they qualify for need-based aid since that aid can't be taken away.
NIL is also starting to ramp up at Ivy schools. There was a controversy over Harvard selecting their new football coach and there is now a Harvard football boosters group that will pay football players NIL $$$s to play at Harvard. You won't get $5MM a year in NIL money like Alabama quarterback...but there are a ton of rich Harvard alums that are happy for you to film a commercial for their hedge fund and pay you $100k+.